Red Mars is a love novel for a planet. There isn't a page that goes by in which you do not see an intense passion for our red neighbor from the author.
It is this love that, interestingly, provides the major conflict for this novel.
Red Mars is the first of a trilogy (followed by
Blue Mars) that outlines mankind's expansion from Earth to Mars, a step that becomes necessary as the political, economic, and physical environments on Earth begin a dangerous downward spiral.
The conflict here is between the two major perspectives on what man's role should be on the barren planet. Should we leave it as untouched as possible (the "red" philosophy, so named not necessarily because of Communist tendencies, but due to Mars' native color), or should we terraform the planet it to make it livable for human beings (the "green" philosophy, for obvious reasons)?